22 Jan 2014

Gluck: Orpheus and Eurydice

If you’re the sort of audience member who, when watching a performance of a play or opera, often experiences the urge to abandon your seat and join in with action, then the English Pocket Opera Company’s 2014 collaborative project will be just the thing for you.

Presenting Gluck’s opera, Orpheus
and Eurydice, EPOC invite you to metamorphose from passive onlooker to
active participant, joining Orpheus as he journeys to the underworld to rescue
his treasured Eurydice.

Led by Artistic Director, Mark Tinkler, The English Pocket Opera Company —
now 20-years-old —has for the last 10 years been dedicated to creative
educational projects with children young people, ranging from primary school
children to undergraduates. Previous years have seen Hamlet, Don
Giovanni, Dream (based on Purcell’s The Faerie Queen, a version
of The Ring, Bluebeard’s and Hansel and Gretel
performed in a variety of venues, from the Brady Centre in Tower Hamlets to The
Cochrane Theatre.

The company produces what it describes as ‘Opera for, by and with
children’. Feedback from participants and teachers has been extraordinarily
positive, even eulogistic. And, the statistics too are impressive. In 2012, up
to 50,000 children drawn from 250 schools in 2012 benefitted from the
company’s multidisciplinary programmes; this year’s four-phase project
exploring Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera, Orpheus and Eurydice,
will involve over 10,000 children from 55 schools, as well as talented
designers studying the BA in Performance Design and Practice at Central St
Martins (part of the University of the Arts London), amateur singers and
musicians, along with some professional singers, musicians and theatre
practitioners.

In many ways — in this anniversary year — Gluck’s ‘reform’ opera
is a good choice for this ambulatory project: Gluck’s story is told simply
and with clarity, a result of the composer’s aspirations to replace the
obscure, complex plots of opera seria with a ‘noble simplicity’
— it’s a tale which is easy to follow while perambulating!

Summoned to our feet by Orpheus (Paul Featherstone) in fairground fashion
— ‘Roll up, roll up, for the greatest story ever told!’ — we followed
the hero, accompanied by accordion player, fiddler and assorted furry-masked
creature, to the opening location. The performance begins, not with the solemn,
grief-laden chorus of nymphs and shepherds but with the wedding banquet of
Orpheus and Eurydice (Pamela Hay) which, somewhat wryly, takes place in the
college canteen (design, Maddy Rita Faye). A trellis table is adorned with
goblets, victuals and floral bouquets, around which twirl and spiral the
newly-weds and assorted animal guests, occasionally sweeping members of the
audience into their festive dance. A piano or keyboard is stationed at each
venue; in this opening scene, Music Director and pianist Philip Voldman — who
played with unflappable composure and fluency throughout —strikes up, not
Gluck’s elegant measures, but the mesmerising melody of Papageno’s ‘Das
klinget so herrlich’, which rings out, calming the beasts and reminding us of
another operatic rescue mission in which the hero must stoically undergo trials
and tribulations in order for his beloved to be restored to his arms.

Fatally bitten by a serpent, Eurydice is carried by Orpheus to her grave.
Recorded music bridges the gap between some locations, and the transitions
between live and recorded sound are smooth and natural. Denise Dumitrescu’s
designs turn the CSM Studio Theatre into a Classical funeral vault; burnished
gold, circular pillars of ruffled cloth ripple from ceiling to floor, enclosing
distraught mourners, as the funeral chorus provide a dignified accompaniment to
the noble grace of the setting. As the delicate columns tumble gracefully to
the floor, and Orpheus lunges fruitlessly into the airy space, loss and absence
are poignantly emphasised. Again, the onlookers are drawn into the action,
beckoned to strew white lilies on Eurydice’s grave, as Orpheus desperately
seeks his lost love through the mists of cloth which drape the entrance to the
underworld.

Vivian Lu’s striking, expressionistic tree turns a corner of the Theatre
Bar into the wood in which Orpheus becomes increasingly distressed — haunted
obsessively by the vision and voice of his dead wife. From here, we progress to
the banks of the Styx where Amor (Joanne Foote) appears, to instruct Orpheus to
travel to Hades in order to plead with the Furies for Eurydice to be spared. In
an appropriately bare, starkly lit corner, designer Anastasia Glazova’s white
screens are opened to reveal Amor crouching in a bubble wrap cage; the bubble
wrap is torn down to form a Styxian carpet leading us to Hell (the Platform
Theatre Orchestra Pit) — although as we trod the watery path, paying the
beastly Charon by dropping badges into his mouth, the percussive popping
produced a rather unfortunate, glib sound effect.

But, the motion of descent is persuasive; the rickety stairs leading to the
bowels of the pit emphasise the precariousness and risks of Orpheus’s
venture, and the dense smoke which swirled in around us in the gloom —
perhaps too dense? — evoked the mists which obscure his understanding and his
progress. A discarded shopping trolley, filled with detritus and diabolic
emblems (design Lucia Riley) is a fitting emblem of misery and despair. Three
Furies (Isabella Van Braeckel, Joanna Foote and Eimear Monaghan) angrily storm
through the darkness, accompanied by dramatic choral interjections from above,
until quelled by the sweetness of Orpheus’s lyre — evoked by the resonant
pizzicati of Sivan Traub’s violin — they agree to help return
Eurydice to him.

Ascending to the Theatre Stage, the audience find themselves in the Elysium
Fields of the versatile Van Braeckel and Monaghan, a shimmering paradise of
reflecting white discs strung from knotted ropes, the floor ornamented with
black, circular mats decorated with silvery spirals; the scene is illuminated
by an evocative amber and chartreuse glow. The unveiling of a hideous skeleton
when Orpheus contravenes his promise not to look back at Euridice is a striking
coup de theatre. Drawn to the front of the stage, we witnessed Orpheus
submit to suicidal thoughts in the Theatre Auditorium which is transformed by
Mathias Krajewski into Orpheus’s homeland. A wig-wam of thin threads
furnishes him with a hang-man’s rope until his grief so moves the Gods that
they allow Eurydice to return to the mortal world, weaving and gliding through
the audience to re-join her husband.

For the happy conclusion, the jubilant characters and chorus assemble in the
Theatre Bar for a celebratory home-coming. Robin Soutar’s pillar-box red
Punch and Judy booth restores the sardonic, burlesque air of the opening scene,
as the dignified strains of Gluck give way to the more riotous tones of
Offenbach’s ‘Infernal Galop’.

Performance standards were high, especially considering that most of the
participants are amateurs performers. As Eurydice, soprano Pamela Hay revealed
a glittering upper register and strong, varied characterisation, capable of
capturing both the intensity and insouciance that the different settings
require. The sweetness of her tone and elegance of phrase garnered much pity
for Eurydice. Joanna Foote was similarly affecting as Amor: her arias were
well-crafted and stylish. The chorus sang with good intonation and a
well-blended, balanced sound.

As Orpheus, Paul Featherstone was committed and impassioned, and he did much
to involve the audience in the drama and to encourage their sympathetic
engagement with the protagonists’ fates. But, sadly, poor intonation, some
heavy-handed shaping of the melodic phrases, a rough-edged tone and an
undeviating dynamic level — forte — made this role a weak link in
the performance. There were moments of tenderness, but these were not
sustained, and the big numbers — ‘Chiamo il mio ben’, Che farò senza
Euridice?’ — lacked the necessary mellifluousness and lyricism.

The designs were fresh and interesting; these young, up-and-coming students
approached the work without preconceptions about what opera design ‘should’
be, and there were some imaginative and striking visual images and effects.
Occasionally elements of the venue were a little distracting — signs and
notices, stairways and lighting drawing our focus away from the moral dignity
of the mythological journey; and, occasionally unsuspecting art students going
about their business were startled to find themselves part of an operatic
liberation assignment, their passage barred by an assortment of blessed spirits
or demons! But, the imbibers in the Theatre Bar seemed pleasantly amused by the
arrival of the pantomime-esque road-show at the close.

It seems incredible that all this is achieved on a shoe-string budget; EPOC
relies on box office receipts and students have to fund their own materials for
sets and costumes. It is not just a ‘worthy’ venture but a worthwhile and
artistically rewarding one too.

Claire Seymour

Cast and production information:

This ‘promenade’ version of Gluck’s opera is ‘Phase 2’ of
EPOC’s project, following on from Phase 1 ‘Opera Blocks’, an interactive
presentation in primary schools unpacking the work, and opera in general. Next
comes a performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 17 March involving choirs
representing all 55 schools in the borough of Camden accompanied by the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Phase 4 will conclude the project,
during which EPOC will work with schools to create their own versions of
Orpheus and Eurydice — writing arias, choruses, building and
designing sets and costumes, before performing their devised works to parents.